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Click here to go back to the LWVO Education Update Main Page To: LWVO From: Joan Platz Education Update for June 18, 2007 1) 127th General Assembly: The Ohio House and Senate will hold sessions and committee meetings this week. The House is expected to take up action this week on Am. Sub. HB 119 (Dolan), the $52.4 billion state budget for FY08-09. The Senate unanimously approved its version of HB119 on June 13, 2007 (33-0). If the House does not concur with the Senate changes to the bill, a conference committee will be appointed to work out the differences. Governor Strickland must sign the budget into law before the current state budget ends on June 30, 2007. Recent reports about the state of Ohio's economy are fuming speculation that the proposed budget may be $200 million more than projected revenue estimates, which will be an issue for the conference committee to consider. *Governor Strickland signed into law on June 11, 2007 Am. Sub. HB100 (Brinkman), the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation budget bill for FY08-09. The new law also reforms the oversight and governing structures of the bureau. The budget for FY08-09 is $328.9 million in FY08 and $329.2 million in FY 09. *This Week at the Statehouse: -The House Education Committee, chaired by Representative Setzer, will meet on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 4:00 PM in room 116. The committee will hear testimony on SB143 (Padgett) Speech Language Pathology Interns; HB192 (Brady) Campus Safety; HB254 (Peterson) Nutrition Standards in Schools; HB190 (Hite) Elementary Achievement Tests; and HB181 (Setzer) School Records for Missing Children. -The House Financial Institutions, Real Estate and Securities Committee, chaired by Representative Widener, will meet on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at 11:00 AM in room 116. The committee will hear testimony on HB152 (Widener) Alternative Retirement Plans for Teachers and School Employees; and HB240 (Goodwin) Employment of Retired members of the Public Employees Retirement System, School Employees Retirement System, State Teachers Retirement System, and Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund. 2) 110th Congress: The U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, Representative David Obey chair, approved on June 7. 2007 funding levels for education for FY 2008, which begins October 1, 2007. The bill (not numbered as yet) provides $151.5 billion in discretionary spending for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The funding levels represent an increase of $6.9 billion, or 4.8 percent over FY07 levels, and $10.6 billion more than President George W. Bush's FY08 proposed budget. Funding for the Department of Education will total $61.7 billion, a $4.2 billion or 7.4 percent increase over FY07 levels. A chart showing the proposed funding levels for some education programs is available at http://appropriations.house.gov/pdf/LHHSChart.pdf The following increases in funding levels have been proposed: -The No Child Left Behind Act (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) - $25.6 billion, an increase of $2 billion above FY07, including $1.9 billion for Title I grants to schools. This will benefit 55,000 Title 1 schools and fully fund reading and math instruction for 161,000 low income students. -Even Start - $99 million, an increase of $16.7 million, 20.3 percent. -21st Century Community Learning Centers (After-School Centers) - $1.1 billion, an increase of $125 million, 12.7 percent. -Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Part B grants - $10.9 billion, an increase of $174.5 million. The federal contribution would be 17.2 percent of the per pupil expenditure. -English Language Acquisition - $774 million, an increase of $105.6 million, 15.8 percent. -Reading First - $400 million, a decrease of $629.2 million, 61.1 percent. -Pell Grants - Pell grants will be raised from $4,310 to $4,700. -Child Care and Head Start - $75 million more than FY07 for the Child Care Block Grant and $75 million more for Head Start. The full House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to consider the subcommittee's bill on June 14, 2007, but that hearing was cancelled. The U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies will meet on June 19, 2007 to consider its 2008 appropriations legislation. The full Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Robert Byrd chair, is scheduled to meet on June 21, 2007 and consider the FY08 appropriations for the Departments of Education and the Interior. 3) Ohio Senate Amends Budget Bill....Again: The Senate Finance and Financial Institutions Committee, chaired by Senator John Carey, met for only 34 minutes on June 12, 2007, approved two amendments and an eight page omnibus amendment to Am. Sub. HB 119 (Dolan), and then reported the bill favorably out of committee. The full Senate approved Am. Sub. HB 119 on June 13, 2007 without further amendments. The omnibus amendment approved on June 12, 2007 included approximately 116 changes in the bill, including seventeen for primary and secondary education, and additional amendments for higher education and early childhood education. Some members of the committee expressed disappointment over the fact that the bill still did not include meaningful changes in law to improve the accountability of charter schools, restored the Special Education Scholarship program, and did not provide health care coverage to low-income parents and uninsurable children. Questions were also raised about the adequacy of Ohio's tax base to meet the needs of citizens as a result of the changes made in Ohio's tax structure in the previous biennial budget (126-HB66). A summary of Am. Sub. HB 119 (Dolan) will be provided in upcoming Education Updates, after the House and a possible conference committee have deliberated on the bill. The following are some highlights of the amendments added by the Senate Finance Committee on June 12, 2007, which are included in the version of Am. Sub. HB 119 approved by the Ohio Senate on June 13, 2007: Changes between House and Senate versions of Am. Sub. HB 119 (Dolan) PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION -CHANGE - Restores, with some changes, a provision added by the House that creates a Special Education Scholarship Pilot Program for students with disabilities in grades K-12 to attend alternative public or private special education programs in FY09 through FY14. This provision was eliminated from HB 119 in the first omnibus amendment approved by Senate Finance Committee on June 5, 2007, but was added back through the omnibus amendment approved on June 12, 2007. However, the Senate made changes in the pilot voucher program. The maximum amount of the scholarship will be the least of the following: 1) the fees charged by the alternative program; 2) the sum of the per pupil base cost and the special education weighted funding amounts; or 3) $20,000. -NEW -Requires the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) to base full time equivalency of a community school student, to determine state funding, on the percentage of the community school's total learning opportunities provided, rather than the percentage of 920 hours of learning opportunities under current law. 920 hours is the minimum number of instructional hours that the state requires community schools to provide, but may not be the total number of instructional hours provided by a particular school. -CHANGE- Specifies that if a district uses Poverty-Based Assistance funds to employ classroom aides to increase classroom learning opportunities, that the aides must be engaged in classroom support activities. Eliminates the requirement that a district submit an annual report on the deployment of Poverty-Based Assistance funds if the district received less than $10,000 in Poverty-Based Assistance funds. -CHANGE - Authorizes ODE to withhold a portion of funding from school districts, charter schools, educational service centers or other educational entities, along with other sanctions, for reporting inaccurate data to the Education Management Information System, -CHANGE - Clarifies for purposes of the tangible personal property tax reimbursement for school districts that the definition of "state education aid" includes the amounts calculated for Poverty-Based Assistance and Parity Aid. -CHANGE - Permits the governing authority of a charter school to enter into a contract with its sponsor to open an additional school in the 08-09 school year if the current school was rated Excellent or Effective and named a School of Promise for three of the last four school years; is not managed by an operator; and files a copy of the sponsor contract with the state superintendent of public instruction by March 15, 2008. -NEW - Permits the board of speech-Language Pathology to issue a two-year student permit to speech pathology interns. -CHANGE - Clarifies that only adult career-technical education programs will be moved to the Board of Regents (BOR). The bill requires the Board of Regents, in collaboration with the Department of Education (ODE), to identify which adult career-technical education programs to move from the ODE to the BOR by January 1, 2009. -NEW - Requires ODE to submit an annual report to the General Assembly of each school district's aggregate employee salary and benefits expenditures. -NEW - Updates statutory language regarding the provision of special education and related services for children with disabilities to align with federal law. -NEW- Repeals the requirement that the Legislative Service Commission (LSC) prepare a report in even-numbered years estimating the costs of each education law and administrative rule that became effective during the preceding two years. HIGHER EDUCATION -CHANGE - Overall clarifies language and changes appropriations for higher education programs. Also eliminates language regarding income eligibility for Student Choice grants; restores the current method of apportioning based upon the amounts appropriated; and allows the unspent balance to be carried over and appropriated for the same purpose from FYs08 and 09. TAXATION -CHANGE - Makes technical corrections to the homestead exemption provisions. -CHANGE - Clarifies when school districts may go to the ballot for school district income tax levies. This provision will not commence with the August 7, 2007 election, because filing deadlines will have been missed by the time HB119 is approved. -CHANGE- Extends the authority for a county sales and use tax subsidy - "Tax Increment Financing" - for impact facilities until December 31, 2007. "Impact facilities" continue to be defined as $50 million retail locations with some educational or exhibition space. EARLY CHILDHOOD -NEW - Requires the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services and ODE to develop a fiscal model that joins early care and education programs under one funding system to provide children with access to affordable quality care and education. -CHANGE - Earmarks $50,000/year in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds for the Alliance Early Childhood Education Pilot Project. MISCELLANEOUS -Allows the Tobacco Use Prevention and Cessation Foundation to create a nonprofit and raise funds. -Reduces the Commission on African American Males from 41 members to 23 members and moves the management to the Ohio State University African American and African Studies Community Extension Center. -Designates May as Nutrition and Physical Fitness Month. -Earmarks funds from TANF block grant for the Ohio Council of Urban Leagues for career development programs. -Makes corrections to the Senate's substitute version of the bill by adding $100,000 per fiscal year to the Ohio Historical Society's Line Item 360-502, and earmarks the funding added in that version of the bill of $300,000 per fiscal year for the state archives project. 4) News from the ODE: *The State Board of Education held its annual retreat on June 10-12, 2007 at Maumee Bay State Park, and adopted a resolution commending Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Susan Tave Zelman, for making excellent progress on meeting the Board's priorities for 2006-2007. The Board Approved Priorities are in the areas of Educator Quality and Capacity, Early Childhood Education. Education in the New Global Economy, Identify and Remedy Low Academic Achievement, High Achieving Middle and High Schools, and Modernization of School Funding and Resource Management. The Board discussed priorities for 2007-2008, and will approved those priorities at their July 9-10, 2007 meeting in Columbus. *Algebra II End-of-Course Exam. Ohio is one of nine states working with the American Diploma Project (ADP) Network to develop a common end-of-course exam in Algebra II. The exam will be field tested in several public and nonpublic high schools in October 2007, and available for districts and schools to administer in the spring of 2008. For general information about the Algebra II End-of-Course Exam please visit http://www.achieve.org/node/842 *INFOhio offers several resources and information for summer learning activities for students and their families. Please visit http://www.infohio.org/. Some sites require a user name and password. *The Ohio Board of Regents released "Making the Transition from High School to College in Ohio 2001-2005". The report includes information by school district and by high schools on students who have graduated from high school, and are now attending a public or private university or college in Ohio. The information includes the percentage of students who have graduated; the percent attending four year and two year colleges and universities in Ohio; the percentage of students who took the Ohio Core in high school; and information about the percent of students who are taking remedial coursework in college. The report is available at http://regents.ohio.gov/perfrpt/hs_2007/ *According to an announcement in the June 6, 2007 Education Week (News in Brief Washington Roundup), Ohio and Iowa have been given permission by the US Department of Education to use growth models, based on the growth of individual students, to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind law. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings made the announcement on May 24, 2007. Iowa has been given unconditional approval, while Ohio must adopt a uniform "N" size, which is the minimum number of students in a subgroup, for all ethic, demographic, and racial groups tracked by NCLB. Currently Arkansas, Delaware, North Carolina, and Tennessee are using growth models, and Florida has also been given conditional approval. 5) State of Poverty Report Released: The Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies and the Center for Community Solutions released on May 7, 2007 its annual report called "The State of Poverty in Ohio 2007: Jobs Vanish and Incomes Plunge as Inequality Rises, Poverty Reaches All Time High since the War on Poverty". According to the report, Ohio's poverty rate increased to 13 percent in 2005, which is an all time high. 1.75 million of Ohioans were in poverty in 2000 compared to 1.862 million Ohioans in 2005. Ohio lost 204,308 jobs between 2000 and 2005, and did not recover from a national recession like other states. Income inequality is also increasing as income levels are rising among the wealthy while they are declining among the poor and middle class. "The obvious means to end poverty in any family is for a worker in that family to get and hold a job that pays earnings sufficient to exceed the poverty income standard. A full-time year-round job must pay at least $8.25 to reach this level, a figure 60 percent higher than the current federal minimum wage. Even the newly increased Ohio minimum wage of $6.85 per hour provides wages that are 17 percent below the poverty level for a typical Ohio family of three that contains a full-time year-round minimum wage worker." p. 1. The report includes interesting information for school districts in Ohio, including rankings of school districts in 2000 and 2004 based on real median income levels, information about increased inequity in incomes within school districts, and a map showing the percent change in real median income in 2004 by school district. Almost all of Franklin County, for example, shows a decrease in real median income from 12.4 to 30 percent. "Thus the fact that real median incomes between 2000 and 2004 increased in only 25 of Ohio's 612 communities, while they fell in the remaining 587, indicates that substantial income erosion among middle-income taxpayers was taking place in virtually all geographic areas of Ohio and Map B shows that decreases were most severe in inner ring suburbs." p. 10. The report makes the following recommendations: -State Earned Income Tax Credit: Ohio should establish a state earned income tax credit (EITC) on Ohio state income tax returns. The earned income tax credit will encourage work and will provide urgently needed cash for Ohio's poorest workers and families. A state EITC would help Ohio families escape for poverty or meet basic expenses. A 2003 report by Policy Matters Ohio found that a state EITC would lift 8,000 Ohio children out of poverty. -Medicaid Coverage: Ohio should restore Medicaid coverage to those working low-wage parents who have incomes between 90 and 100 percent of the federal poverty level. These parents work at jobs that pay $7 -10 per hour, and have little discretionary income for other necessities. They cannot afford to purchase health insurance. Medicaid coverage helps keep working parents healthier, which enhances their ability to parent effectively. -Proactive Action to Prevent Unemployment: Ohio needs to increase its level of proactive action to prevent unemployment. The state should include significant increases in its efforts to retrain workers for new jobs that may replace the jobs that have disappeared over the last decade plus. The first step would be to move the Workforce Investment program from the Department of Job and Family Services to the Ohio Department of Development. -Monthly Cash Assistance Benefit: Ohio Works First's primary focus should be on ensuring that the basic needs of Ohio parents and children living on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) are met. One way to do this is to provide an increase in the monthly cash assistance benefit paid to families and to tie future increases in the grant to increases in the consumer price index. -Academic Readiness for School: When all children start with a fair chance to learn, they will have a much better chance of avoiding poverty. Fair chances start with giving family members the tools they need to help their young children develop social, emotional, and academic readiness for school. Ohio can do this by offering a full-day kindergarten option for all Ohio children, by improving access to primary and behavioral health care, and by creating a high quality early care and education system. A child's experiences in their education setting should also be reinforced at home. Family literacy programs should also be available to help parents and young children form a learning partnership that can help end the cycle of poverty. A study by the National Center for Family Literacy has concluded that parental literacy is one of the single most important indicators of a child's success. -Food Stamp Reform: Thousands of low-income Ohioans aren't able to access the federally funded Food Stamp Program because Ohio hasn't fully implemented the food stamp reform provisions of the federal farm bill. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services should move quickly to bring Ohio's program up to date and to make sure that adequate funding 6) New Research from the Center for Public Education: The Center for Public Education is an initiative of the National School Boards Association and the National School Boards Foundation. Recently it released information about dropout prevention, "Keeping Kids in School: What Works to Prevent Dropouts?"; "No-Excuses Approach to School Improvement in Bisbee, Arizona", "Embracing a spirit of Innovation at Walden III in Wisconsin", and "At-a-Glance Guide to Calculating High School Graduation Rates." The article by Craig Jerald called "Keeping Kids in School", summarizes research on the components that should be included in a comprehensive district plan to tackle students who are dropping out of school. The components are, Prediction: Processes for identifying students early on who are in danger of dropping out; Intervention: Programs and initiatives to help high-risk students get back on track; Prevention: Ways to organize school programs that will minimize the chances a student will become at risk of dropping out; and Recovery: Options for keeping older students in the pipeline when intervention and prevention are not enough. Please visit http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org to read these articles and sign-up for the Center's email news briefs. 7) Whole Child Web Site Launched: The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) has launched a new web site to support its campaign: The Whole Child: Healthy, Safe, Engaged, Supported, Challenged. The web site includes a resource clearinghouse, information about policy makers who support the whole child initiative, and ways to take action to support whole child initiatives. For information please visit http://www.wholechildeducation.org/ 8) Education Week's Special Report on High School Diplomas: Education Week published on June 12, 2007 a report called 2007 Diplomas Count, Ready for What? Preparing Students for College, Careers, and Life After High School. This report uses data from the Occupational Information Network and the American Community Survey to look at the impact of education levels on types of jobs and income levels available to students entering the job market. According to the analysis, today's high school graduates will need at least some college to obtain decent paying careers, and students without a diploma will face an uncertain future. Nationwide only 70 percent of 9th grade students graduate from high school in four years. The report also raises policy issues. For example, the type of academic and nonacademic skills that students will need to be prepared for work is not clear. Students with higher skills in mathematics earn more in the labor market, but some researchers believe that it is just as important for students to develop skills in problem solving and soft or applied skills, such as being able to work with people from other cultures, creativity, communication skills, and being dependable and industrious. Some states are currently defining what college and work ready means so that students are prepared for college or careers. The report notes that eleven states have defined college readiness based on course requirements, and fourteen more are in the process of defining college readiness, and twenty-one states have defined work readiness, and ten more are working on a definition. For more information visit http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2007/06/12/index.html 9) Schools Improve Through Arts Education: The most comprehensive collection of research on arts education was published in 2002 by the Arts Education Partnership and is called Critical Links: Learning in the Arts and Student Academic and Social Development, R. Deasy Editor. More than 65 distinct relationships between the arts - dance, drama/theatre, music, and visual arts - and academic and social outcomes are documented in this compendium, which is available online at http://www.aep-arts.org/publications/info.htm?publication_id=10. Critical Links includes 62 research studies on arts education, and includes all arts disciplines: dance, drama/theatre, music, and visual art. All of the studies that were included in Critical Links demonstrated one or more of the following: *The studies show how the study of the arts enables all students to reach high levels of academic achievement; *The studies show how the study of the arts improves overall school performance; and *The studies show how the study of the arts creates the context and climate in schools that are most conducive to learning. Two articles have recently been published in the popular press that support the findings of Critical Links. These articles are: 1) Daily Times of Salisbury, MD, "Grants enable Willards Elementary students to learn about other cultures by Candice Evans, June 12, 2007 http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070531/NEWS01/705310378/1002, and 2) Christian Science Monitor, "By forming community partnerships, Hope High School in Rhode Island and other struggling public schools are showing signs of improvement" By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, May 31, 2007. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0531/p13s01-legn.html. -Willards Elementary School in Salisbury, MD created the Willards Integration Network Team (WIN Team) four years ago to integrate the arts -- visual, theater, dance, and music -- into the curriculum of this Title 1 school. Since that time Willards has moved from the lower testing range to one of the top three schools in the county. According to teachers, the arts have made progress possible because students are excited to be in school. Willards was awarded the 2006-2007 Maryland State School "Creative Ticket School of Excellence Award" designed to recognize excellent arts education programs and their outstanding accomplishments in making arts an essential part of education in their district. They were also given "The Visionary School Award" from the Young Audiences of Maryland, granted to a school that demonstrated the importance of art education for their students. - Hope High School in Providence, Rhode Island has made a dramatic turnaround with the help of the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, and the Hope High School Arts Community, a smaller school formed in 2003 within the original high school. This school provides students with an integrated curriculum that applies academic learning in the arts and other subjects to real situations. The results have been increased student attendance, test scores, and participation in after school programs. Students are winning competitions in the arts and college scholarships. AND, after decades of being unaccredited, the school recently became one of just two high schools in Providence accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. |
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Ohio Fair Schools
Campaign, 94 Columbus Road
Athens, Ohio 45701
Tel. (740)592-2866 Fax (740)593-5451
Athens, Ohio 45701
Tel. (740)592-2866 Fax (740)593-5451